Energy-saving tips for fall

As leaves keep turning orange, here's how you can stay green

As autumn settles in and we set back the clock, rake the leaves and stoke the furnace, we have a lot of assumptions about the most environmentally friendly ways to proceed.

But are those assumptions right? We've gathered a bushel of answers to some autumn household eco questions.

What is the most environmentally friendly way to dispose of my leaves?

The best option is to leave a coat of leaves on your lawn and chop them up with your lawn mower to create a layer of mulch that will break down and give your lawn nutrients. This is most easily done when the leaves are dry and crunchy rather than when they are thick and soggy.

Place the rest of the chopped leaves around outdoor plants as ground cover and in your compost heap.

Burning leaves creates undesirable emissions, and it's illegal in most municipalities. Tossing them out in sealed non-biodegradable plastic bags sends them to landfills where they can't decompose properly and will leak harmful greenhouse gases.

Blowing them around with a leaf blower creates carbon emissions and noise pollution while eating energy and stirring up allergens. If none of this bothers you, a leaf blower can be useful to push foliage to the street in municipalities that offer street leaf sweeping and allow blowers. A rake also works just fine for this, however. Collected leaves are taken to farms or composting sites, according to local officials.

In municipalities, such as Chicago, that don't have leaf-sweeping days, pushing leaves into the street "can clog the drains in the street creating blockages and other problems," Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation spokesman Matt Smith said.

In areas of Chicago served by the blue bin program, residents can place bagged leaves next to the blue bin through November for pickup, Smith said. Paper or clear plastic bags are preferred. Do not put them in the blue bin or in the regular garbage can.

In municipalities that don't offer street leaf sweeping or blue bins, residents should find out when and how their municipality will accept bagged leaves —which often must be placed in biodegradable paper bags.

What's the best way to save electricity on lighting despite fewer hours of daylight?

In these darker months, the No. 1 thing you can do to save money on your lighting bills, experts say, is switch from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs. CFL bulbs can reduce your lighting energy usage up to 75 percent. Still, some consumers worry about potential mercury exposure if the bulbs break and are bothered by the harsh white glow of fluorescent bulbs. Some of these concerns are allayed by widely available plastic-coated, shatterproof CFLs and bulbs on the lower end of the lighting spectrum that are designed to mimic the warmer tones of standard incandescent bulbs.

CFL bulbs, however, cannot be thrown out in the regular garbage. Instead they must be recycled properly through municipal hazardous-waste collection programs or brought to participating Ace Hardware, Home Depot, Ikea and Lowe's stores. The EPA offers recycling locations on its Web site.

I like saving money by cooking cheaper cuts of meat in a slow-cooked stew. Are slow cookers the most energy-efficient way to do this?

Slow-cooker users may assume that because the appliance has a lower wattage (70 to 250) than a conventional electric oven (roughly 2,000), they save energy. But Doug Cote (www.stretcher.com), a writer for the "Dollar Stretcher" Web site, notes that while slow cookers' heating elements stay on continuously, electric ovens cycle their elements on an off as needed to maintain temperature, often only about one-fourth of the actual cooking time.

Assuming you would use a slow cooker on high for twice as many hours as you would use your electric oven, the energy usage could come out equal. Efficiency also can be affected by the number of other things you can cook simultaneously in your oven, how much heat you lose when you open it and how efficient and well-insulated the oven is. The short answer: There is no clear winner in this fight.

Even more energy efficient for cooking smaller dishes is the toaster oven. And most energy efficient of all, for things that it can cook well, is the microwave.

Still, as online energy adviser Michael Bluejay (aka Mr. Electricity) points out, in terms of preserving money, energy and the environment, what you eat matters much more than how you cook it. Meat and dairy require much more energy to produce than plant-based foods, and switching to a plant-based diet, even once a week, can make a significant impact on your pocketbook, energy usage and carbon footprint.

I love using a fireplace but have heard that you actually lose more heat than you gain. How can I make my fireplace more efficient?